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FILE - This Oct. 18, 2011 file photo originally released by Starpix shows Mel Stuart, director of the 1971 film, "Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory" at Jacques Torres Chocolates during an event promoting the 40th anniversary of the popular children's film and the Warner Home Video Ultimate Collector's Edition Blu-ray and DVD launch in New York. Stuart died Thursday, Aug. 9, 2012 of cancer at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 83. (AP Photo/StarPix, Marion Curtis, file)

Mel Stuart attends an event promoting the 40th anniversary of "Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory" and the Warner Home Video Ultimate Collector's Edition Blu-ray and DVD launch in New York on Oct. 18, 2011.

AP/StarPix

(CBS/AP) Mel Stuart, the award-winning documentary filmmaker who also directed "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory," has died, his family says.

His daughter, Madeline Stuart, said he died Thursday night of cancer at his home in Los Angeles. He was 83.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Stuart and David L. Wolper established a base of West Coast documentary production at a time when New York filmmakers and TV network news dominated the field.

Stuart's dozens of documentary films include three editions of "The Making of the President" and, for PBS' "American Masters," portraits of the artist Man Ray and the director Billy Wilder.

Stuart's groundbreaking film "Wattstax" focused on the 1972 music festival and Los Angeles' largely black Watts community in the wake of the 1965 riots.

In 2005, PBS aired "The Hobart Shakespeareans," Stuart's profile of a teacher in inner-city Los Angeles whose fifth-grade class each year performed a play by William Shakespeare.

Stuart made "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory," a children's classic starring Gene Wilder in the title role, in 1971. His other features include the 1969 comedy, "If it's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium."